Snock 'n' Roll - Adventures With Michael Hurley (Documentary, 2009)

Here's a little film I made about Michael Hurley in 2009, when first befriended him by happenstance. I never get tired of listening to him - for freshness, his songs are right up there with the fountain of youth. He was also a very kind, generous, engaging man, and we were penpals for several years. His emails were not unlike his songs - all flow, and full of dips and detours into philosophy, random remembrances, one-liners, “a drunk walk of endless sophistication” indeed. He was a gem, one-of-a-kind, had the gift and the calling early on, knew music was his road, and walked it and played until the very last day of his life. I’m a little embarrassed by parts of this film - I was keen to use what lean footage I’d shot to document our encounters, so scraped and scoured for whatever extra images would help thread our story and give some shape. At the time, people were starting to post cellphone video of his live performances. Snock was very adamant about keeping his mug off Youtube - he considered it an invasion of his privacy. I think maybe, in part, it was an initial shock - this new technology creeping up fast that gave instant exposure, a global viewing platform, to his intimate little $10 gigs, without asking, without royalties (by now, such concert footage of him has grown by orders of magnitude, and Kombucha ubiquitous!). I was, then, the only one he gave permission to document him, and for that I felt very honored. But he insisted I didn’t post it to YouTube, saying people should have to work, to dig a little, to find the good music - it shouldn’t be silver-platter'd the way Spotify was suddenly doing. We agreed I’d only post it on Vimeo. I kept my promise until now, a few weeks since he passed away. Someone posted a yucky low-rez version of this doc on Youtube without permission, and that's worse than nothing, from a creator's POV. So I now upload the original quality, in loving memory. Snock’s music is solid gold, healing, soothing, invigorating, cleansing. In these challenging times, the more people who hear it, the better.